CHP has received a grant of R14-million from the UK Medical Research Council to implement and evaluate an evidence-informed community health worker (CHW) programme. The project will run from 2016 to 2019.
As South Africa moves towards universal health coverage (UHC), access to quality health care for all will require an affordable service platform that enables under-served, vulnerable communities to access care. Programmes that train and deploy CHWs are well placed to support people from vulnerable communities to negotiate access to facility-based care. Research has demonstrated that CHW programmes are successful if there is good programme design and management, integration with the health system, and the programme is designed to be able to meet the community’s needs. However, there is insufficient evidence on how to put these characteristics into practice.
The new project, entitled Batlhokomedi (‘carers’), will develop a CHW service model based on the key elements of the South African CHW policy, local circumstances and constraints with particular reference to affordability, and an understanding of the literature on barriers and facilitators. CHP will implement and evaluate this model (using a before-and-after design) in two pilot sites in the Sedibeng Health District. The findings of the study will provide practical lessons for implementing a CHW programme at scale in South Africa and similar settings in other low and middle income countries. Read more about this on our research page: Batlhokomedi (‘carers’)